MDS: On Alternative Medicines

Yesterday I mumbled on with thoughts about pineapple and pills. Today, I find myself ruminating on alternative medicines.

A Web search by Penny gave us a site called Myelodysplastic-options.com, which is apparently offered by something called The Society for the Promotion of Alternative Health (SPAH) of London, England.

The site shows a chart that’s supposedly imparts a "detailed comparison of the most effective Myelodysplastic Syndromes treatments available in alternative medicine."

All it does, however, it generate confusion by obtusely "ranking" three products.

Oh, and it also offers links to the products’ Web sites where, of course, one can read magnificent claims for each product, such as

• the most proven, effective, safe and easy to use product for healing Myelodysplastic Syndromes,

and

• the world's most relied upon and clinically proven natural treatment for Myelodysplastic Syndromes . . . a completely outstanding product and there is absolutely no alternative to its unique formula.

But, even a thorough exploration of these sites yields no information as to what the "results" actually are. The products "treat" MDS? What does that mean? Especially when the MDS medical community says definitively that, with the exception of a successful bone marrow transplant, there is no cure.

Is it also significant that all three of these "recommended" products are European?

It’s tempting to think you can down an herbal pill and find yourself magically healed. Very tempting. One begins to understand why people grab at such alluring straws in hopes of finding cures to diseases.

But, in the name of science, if nothing else, I remind myself to limit the variables. I could discard skepticism and give into the herbal remedy temptation. But doing that before we have any real understanding of Vidaza’s effectiveness—even if the herbals were working—we’d not know which medicine to credit with the success.

Even a D-grade science student like yours truly knows enough not to muddy the waters with multiple variables. So, enticing as these "cures" may be, we’ll stick to being Vidaza needle-stuck.

For now, anyway.